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Why does audio quality vary during playback on the BBC Player?

For the BBC's national stations, 64kbps is currently the agreed maximum bit rate for our Listen Again programmes on the BBC Player. For other local or regional BBC stations, the maximum is 44kbps.

Because of the Surestream technology we employ, you may find that streaming quality falls below this, depending on available bandwidth and the speed of your connection.

You may find that reported bit rates in the "Now Playing" panel of the BBC Player begin high, before slowly dropping to a lower number. This happens because the audio stream data is being transferred to your hard drive or "cached" quickly when you first start listening, so that a "buffer" of audio content can be built up ahead of time to ensure smooth playback. As the cache fills up, this number will gradually drop until the true bit rate quality you are receiving is displayed.

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